The fact is that UK didn’t have the guards to play man-to-man all year. Not Porter, not Liggins, not Galloway, not even Meeks could stay with their man all year. Drive right past, then kick for an open three. Rinse, repeat. EVERY. FREAKING. GAME.

But the real gist of my post was not about defense. It was about how basketball-savvy people like yourself seem to think we’re just a point guard away from greatness when there are clearly many, many, many things wrong with this team.

And on a related rant, is Clay or anybody else going to do a little end-of-season research regarding this basketball god Pomeroy and see if his stats actually mean anything in relation to who the better teams are? I mean we all love quoting lists that have the Cats near the top but it’s hard to take them seriously when they’re such a crummy team.

I didn’t mean to say Kentucky’s defense was the best in the country. I meant to say it was one of the things we did best this year.

I really question the overall basketball knowledge of people that claim we should have been running a zone defense this year. No athletes? Light on Athletes? Size and athleticism were our biggest strengths all season long. We are 3rd in the country in blocked shots!

Also I think if you’ll look I said “If UK had someone that handles the ball somewhere close to the level of Sharon Collins”… I didn’t say we need an All-American point guard.

But it is impossible to deny our turnover problem was our biggest. There were less than 10 teams in the entire country that coughed the ball up more times than UK. Simply solving our problem at the point guard would make us a nationally competitive team next year (keeping in mind the added depth, experience, and overall talent of the recruits we have coming in).

If we get rid of our coach, I think we’re setting ourselves back several years with an empty recruiting class, and that just isn’t the way to go about building a nationally competitive team.

Well let’s see, they also needed Jodie to do more than chuck up bad shot after bad shot. They needed him to do things like pass, defend, and rebound.
They also needed a true center, a decent small forward and a halfway decent bench.
They also needed to revolve the offense around the best player(Pat) and revolve the defense around this particular team’s skill-set(light on backcourt experience + light on athletes = zone).
Do I really need to go on or can anyone help me with a few more things that this team needs?

The single most telling quote from Gillispie in his two years that shows his disconnect from what happened to this program is the one where he says(even this week) that the Cats are “very, very close to being a special team.”
That says it all doesn’t it. The guy has no clue. And those of you buying into it are right there with him. Sherron Collins my arse.

Yes, Kansas was less experienced than us, but they returned talent/experience at the most important position. Collins and Aldrich both would have started for 98% of all college basketball teams last year. They just were in limited roles because Self (and Williams before him) have had that team consistently at the top for 10 years in a row.

Williams left Self 5 NBA players. Tubby left Gillispie 2 (assuming both Meeks and Crawford actually play at that level which is generous), and those 2 didn’t even play together because of Meeks’ injury.

Also you want to compare Gillispie to Self in a negative way, but you ignore Bill Self’s history with players deciding to leave. Also it happened fairly regular with our former coach… a person I’ve never seen you speak about so negatively.

And yes… our losses to USC and Georgia can both be tied to a lack of experience/talent at the guard positions. That and the fact that college basketball is extremely volatile. If it wasn’t, Louisville wouldn’t have been blown out by Notre Dame, or lost a home game to the team we just beat handily.

Can you (or anyone) honestly say another coach would have taken last year’s team through all of its injury problems and gone 12-4 in conference with a straight face? Can you say our defense hasn’t been fantastic the past two years? Can you say Gillispie wasn’t dropped into a very difficult situation being left with a team severely lacking in talent? Can you say the recruits Gillispie has coming in his first 3 years aren’t a major step up in consistency and overall talent?

Honestly the ONLY reason I can see for Coach Gillispie getting this much crap is if there is something going on off the floor I’m unaware of. Yeah, the way he talked to the sideline reporter, and the way he interacts with local media sometimes leaves a little to be desired, but that would all be erased if he was winning up to the local media/fan’s standards. The problem is those standards are irrational for a coach left with little talent in his second year…

Sorry for writing so much.